How FareCompare delivers real-time flight deals on Twitter

Four years ago, FareCompare built a powerful deal-finding engine that could detect that the price for a flight from Miami to Telluride has dropped to its lowest price in history – but, as usual, seat inventory is low and seats this cheap will go fast.

So how does FareCompare alert that snowboarder in S. Florida quickly enough so he can get in on the deal?

Forget taking out an ad in the paper – that deal will be gone long before the ink is dry.

What if our Florida friend could follow cheap flight deals from his closest airport on Twitter? Thanks to Twitter’s innovative real-time messaging system infrastructure – that Miami snow fanatic could hear about the cheap Telluride deal instantly – and get that great low fare.

Simple, right?

Perhaps simple in concept, but the execution of the system is extremely complex involves the real-time processing of more than 500 airline feeds and more than 270,000 city pairs worldwide – delivered as real-time deal tweets to more than 170 Twitter accounts, indexed by US and Canada cities.

The concept is simple – execution, complex – and it’s a service exclusively provided by FareCompare since the spring of 2009.

Now air travelers in more than 170 US and Canadian cities can follow their home airports on Twitter and get real-time tweets when prices drop: Â all they do is sign up for their closest airports – for example, @flyfromDFW (Dallas), @flyfromFLL (Ft. Lauderdale), and @flyfromNYC (the greater New York airports).

Followers then receive real-time tweets on flight deals just from those specified airports – which cuts out unwanted ‘noise’. Finding the right airport is easy, find your airport now, and FareCompare’s ‘one-click to savings’ technology puts shoppers directly on an easy-to-use travel calendar, to quickly and easily find the best prices, every time.

So when that Florida snowboarder wants to find that cheap flight deal to hit the slopes, it’s only a tweet away. FareCompare.com to the rescue! Find your airport at http://www.farecompare.com/twitter.